State Pension Accounting Estimates and Strong Public Unions
研究发现，拥有更强公共工会的州养老金计划倾向于选择更高的折现率以改善报告的资金水平，并避免选择较长的摊销期来掩盖资金不足，从而让养老金义务看起来负担更轻。
ABSTRACT Concerns are commonly raised that strong public unions extract generous pension benefits from state governments and are the cause of states' burdensome pension obligations. Prior research (Anzia and Moe 2015) finds evidence supporting such concerns. Consistent with incentives to minimize such perceptions, our findings suggest that state pension plans with stronger public unions select higher discount rates to improve reported funding levels. While riskier asset allocations are used to support the higher discount rates (which equal the expected return on the plan assets), most of the higher rates appear opportunistic. In addition, consistent with a desire to avoid drawing attention to persistent plan underfunding, our evidence indicates that stronger union plans are less likely to select longer amortization periods to recognize pension deficits when underfunding is larger. We do not, however, find evidence for asset smoothing periods being used to delay the recognition of investment losses on plan assets. Together, our findings suggest that stronger union plans take steps to make their pension obligations look less burdensome to the public.